Tag Archives: was

So Much Fun

Posted on by under 2025, August 2025 - Persuasion

As Rupa chugged the remnants of her Singha beer she caught sight of her inner arm tattoo and involuntarily winced with regret. The faded unicorn, a hazy reminder of a debauched weekend in Budapest with her bestie Ruby, who had the tattoo mirrored on her inner thigh.

“Who wears it best?!” they would often exclaim in unison. Rupa could never admit that she loathed it, seeing the unicorn as an emblem of her vulnerability, rather than a symbol of friendship. Rupa’s mother called Ruby ‘a bad influence’, whereas Rupa thought Ruby was ‘so much fun’. Collectively they were referred to by various monikers – the Ru Sisters, Ru Squared, Ru to the power of two or the more pedestrian Double Trouble.

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Unpersuaded

Posted on by under 2025, August 2025 - Persuasion

First year of college I had to endure Jerry Burns. He was your standard, entitled nice guy, forever moaning over his virginity and what an injustice it was that those heartless bitches wouldn’t date him.

I was unpersuaded to be his girlfriend, probably because in addition to being entitled and brimming with rage, he was also criminally boring; his only topic was himself.

Second year, I mercifully didn’t share a house with him, although he kept sending me drunken texts on how much he missed me, how hanging out with me was the best time of his life and what a stone-cold whore I was for ignoring him.

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Open To Persuasion

Posted on by under 2025, August 2025 - Persuasion

Carefully opening her eyes, Holly had a head full of bees. The noise bounding around, clanging, forced her bolt upright. It wasn’t a dream, she was in a cell!!

The smell of urine caused her to gag. There was a toilet in the corner, the sight of which made her retch even harder. Slowly her memory returned in flashes .

Shawna again, why did she always go along with her wild ideas? It had been the same when they were in college .

The trip to the woods ended in a bog, then to add insult to injury a branch swung back and a black eye for Holly, with Shauna laughing her head off. A night on a pub crawl, Holly woke up in a bush on the prom, no sign of  Shauna. Apparently she thought Holly looked so peaceful, she left her there. Getting caught trying to sneak into a posh nightclub, ejected by the scruff of their necks. The list was endless but this was the last straw. No more!

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The Surgery of Mirrors

Posted on by under 2025, July 2025 - The Mirror

Dr Ima Kwak hesitated. The oblique angle of the antique mirror captured him seated in his wood-panelled office; the leather olive-green captain’s chair highlighted his status. He caught himself glancing and sighed. That advert had sounded promising.

“Immersive Scenarios ensure every trainee surgeon is practice-ready for ONLY a fraction of your traditional cost.”

Still he held back from clicking the know-more link. The responsibilities of Regional Post-Graduate Dean in Medical Education had over the 26 years seeped, morphed and varicosed as if from an untreatable haemophiliac. It now included fiscal responsibility and he was at heart a clinician not an accountant.

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There is no infinity.

Posted on by under 2025, July 2025 - The Mirror

The dead body after being held up to the mirror did indeed have a reflection, an infinite number of them as a matter of fact. The police were amused by the two-mirror illusion. The frantic scrabblings by the bedside were dismissed as the ravings of madness.

The cause of death was determined to be that of a heart attack brought on by stress. That’s how the story ended.

*

The infinite mirror trick is a lie. You know how it goes, you stand between two mirrors facing each other and you’re greeted by an infinite line of yous, disappearing into the horizon, but in truth mirrors don’t reflect 100 percent of light, so each repeated reflection is a little dimmer than before. So if you strain your eyes long enough, you can see your reflections disappear into blackness.

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Mei Myself I

Posted on by under 2025, July 2025 - The Mirror

Standing before the bathroom mirror she was startled by the shadow behind her

Mei always felt something was missing.

Mei 美 meant ‘beautiful’ in Mandarin, which she thought both cruel and comical as Mei felt anything but. Western beauty standards reared their ugly head during teenagehood, sparking a yearning for longer legs, wider eyes and fairer skin. A well disguised eating disorder joined the party.

The bathroom mirror continued to tell and withhold her secrets. A sallow complexion, a haunted stare. A half visible shadow emerged to her right

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Green Blob in Mirrorland

Posted on by under 2025, July 2025 - The Mirror

The girls’ toilets were the best place to avoid PE lessons and the odd double maths period. Here Nettie could read, sing in the tiled echo chamber, attempt new hairstyles and, best of all, try to figure how many times she was reflected in the mirrors on opposite walls.  It was impossible to count, each iteration was smaller than the last.  The opposing mirrors made a thing of wonder for Nettie. If she waved, all the  Netties did the same, exact but diminished.

At home Nettie tried the same effect with two of her bedroom mirrors. It was less stunning than the school arrangement and Nettie’s friends weren’t awestruck. Their main concern was the amount of time Nettie spent in front of her mirrors.

            ‘Come on Nettie, let’s go out for a walk and get some chips.’

Suzie, the best mate, rarely failed to get a response to the chips lure.

            ‘Nah, I got loads of homework to finish . You go and enjoy my share’.

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Wannabe

Posted on by under 2025, July 2025 - The Mirror

That old ad is doing the rounds on social media again. It has always haunted me, but after the day I’ve had at work, I’m regretting my life choices more than ever. I indulge myself by dialling the number.

“Is it too late?” I’ll say. I sigh when a recorded message tells me that my call cannot be connected. 

            I know exactly where I was on Friday 4th March 1994. It was mum’s fortieth birthday, so I had trudged into town after sixth-form college to browse the shops for a gift.

            The mirror had caught my eye immediately amongst all the other bric-a-brac, emitting a soft golden glow under the lights. It had been relegated to the back of a shelf behind five dusty dolls, which I ceremoniously brushed aside.

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Two Thousand Weekends – a reflection on immorality

Posted on by under 2025, July 2025 - The Mirror

Phil didn’t mean to become a murderer. Not at first.

It all happened because he read on social media that humans, on average, live about 4500 weeks.

Being a number geek, Phil calculated that the first 900 weeks are spent learning how to walk, talk, pass exams, and unclip bra straps. The last 1500 comprise an increasingly strident existential shriek translating into “How the fuck did that happen?”

Of the remainder, about 100 is spent in utter confusion, comatose, or madness, leaving 2000 weeks, or more to the point, weekends, of life to live as you want.

In short, life comes down to eleven years of weekend fun sandwiched between unremitting drudgery. For most people, anyway.

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BILLY DON’T BE A HERO

Posted on by under 2025, July 2025 - The Mirror

Sitting half way up the Witches Hat, Billy Thomas was trying to comfort the young couple. They had tried to climb down the Hat, but had become stuck after a slip on the shale had left the young lady with a badly gashed leg.

Billy and his friends were on their Boxing Day trek and had been walking along gossamer trails, the hoar frost thick on the ground. A weak sun hung sulkily in the sky.  He was always thankful  to escape the aftermath of family Christmas Day.

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Blink

Posted on by under 2025, July 2025 - The Mirror

“Did you see that?”

The man before me was a horror. It’s pale face was twisted in anguish like a Halloween mask held to the fire. It scratched at it’s scalp, at the visible, glistening wounds that ran like muddy rivulets between tuffs of matted hair. It’s eyes, milky and dull, were set deep into it’s skull. It’s jaw hung slack. Teeth haphazardly stacked like a tombstone lying abandoned upon a vandalised grave. A monster. Always watching. I hated it.

What was it’s intentions?

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The Chancellor’s Sacrifice

Posted on by under 2025, June 2025 - Sacrifice

They say the Chancellor made the sacrifice no one else dared make, for many of the emperor’s subjects had longed to end their master’s life but to do that deed would be to forfeit their own.

The emperor was descended, or so it was claimed, from almighty Jupiter himself and thus his word was law. If he demanded for you to leap into the sea you would do so. If he desired to bed your wife or daughter, you’d smile and stand aside.

When the emperor spent the summer solstice by the mediterranean sea, a local fisherman collected a huge haul of fish and neglected to share this bounty with his lord. The emperor upon learning of this, had the fish rubbed against the man’s body until he bled to death.

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WHAT IF?

Posted on by under 2025, June 2025 - Sacrifice

Opening the curtains Anna looked out on a kaleidoscope of colour: the perfect day, the birds awakening, a flurry of sleepy tweets, trees rustling .

Climbing back into bed she sighed in relief. Six in the morning and since her mother’s death there was no hurry now to start her day. Turning on her clock-radio a distant memory wrapped around her, a favourite song of her and Joe. She cried, recalling all the hurt of her choices.

In Sydney, Australia Joe Harvey sat looking through the family album. Jan, his wife, had passed away some time ago. Living on his own was hard, he missed the companionship. Out of nowhere a shaft of misery drove deep into him. A name popped into his mind, consoling, one that he had buried long ago.

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A Wibble Visitation

Posted on by under 2025, June 2025 - Sacrifice

It was an international group of UFO watchers that first sighted the visitors to Earth. Scepticism had surrounded their beliefs about life beyond planet Earth, but when the knowledge of unfamiliar life forms became widespread several countries put their national guard on shoot-to-kill alert.

Some of the UFO scanners expressed pleasure at their discovery. From Greenland :

‘We saw a group of eight visitors who seemed to have blown to Earth. No vehicle visible. These little guys are about the size of a child’s space hopper – round, with skin like a very old mouse, sort of patchy grey hairs. Hands seem to work like a chameleon’s. Don’t know what world they came from or how they travel.’

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She Wanted More

Posted on by under 2025, May 2025 - The Party

Honeysuckle Kumar wanted More. More of what, she was not quite sure. Perhaps more space to figure it all out.  

Theoretically Honey (as she was known as to friends and family) had Enough and should have Nothing to Complain About. A high earning husband, a software developer who took his role of provider seriously. Twins, Hari and Jasmin, who recently took up places at good universities. The mortgage on their detached three bedroom house in a middle class (albeit boring) area was paid off.

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Christmas Party for One

Posted on by under 2025, May 2025 - The Party

            Owen walked the dog down the lane and turned towards the Norman castle. It was very quiet there, befitting Christmas eve. The Teifi gorge around two sides of the ruin was invisible, making its threat of a blind descent into the underworld stronger than ever. The dog was nervous. Usually it loved the lane, its smells. In pitch black Owen was about to turn back when, atop one of the castle’s walls, he saw a figure, like a lonely guard defending his prince’s grounds centuries after his master’s death. He looked again and the solitary warrior had vanished. He and the dog both slunk home with their tails between their legs, unsettled.

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It’s My Party

Posted on by under 2025, May 2025 - The Party

I can tell you this, it was the worst thing ever. One minute I’m whole and healthy and the next I’m draped over the pavement with a spine in two bits and no movement in my lower half. RTA they call it, huh, more like EOL, or end of life as it was.

Long story short, it could have been much worse – my top half works pretty well, but nothing from the waist down. It’s stunning what medics can do to put Humpty Dumpty together again. Family rallied round and helped where the wheelchair couldn’t go. I moved in with my parents (for a while) so they could share the work of looking after me. Carers cared, and a PA arranges things that need arranging: meals fetched, clothes washed, library books changed, shoes laced, soft voices, no rows (I miss the rows).

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Carol and the Case of the Suspicious Neighbours

Posted on by under 2025, May 2025 - The Party

“We’ve been infiltrated,” said Carol, scanning the assembled members of the W.I. “I saw our cake recipe on Val Clark’s shopping list in Tesco this morning.”

“But… it’s only a Victoria Sponge!” said Julie.

Carol flung her arms in the air. “How many times do I have to say it? Use the code name!”

It was fair to say that former Superintendent Carol was finding retirement a struggle. It had only been six weeks but already she was exasperated.

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Which Way?

Posted on by under 2025, May 2025 - The Party

Walking out of the town hall Aldo turned to me: ”Nan, isn’t Alan Parson wonderful. He can get this country back to the way it should be.”

Looking at him, I sighed. He had the look of the converted, his eyes shining at the thought of a wealthy life for all, poor boy. I should really keep my thoughts to myself but that man was dangerous, all his talk fantasy to lure the youngsters in. 

”My Mam told me about a guy who broadcast during the war; his name was Lord Jaw Jaw . The broadcasts sound very similar to that man, only he was trying to get us to surrender promising he would make us all a wonderful life under Titler. ”

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A night out on Shambhala 752B

Posted on by under 2025, April 2025 - The List

“ACCESS GRANTED.”

The door slid soundlessly aside.

“Christ, man,” Jessie whispered, awestruck. “How’d you manage to do that?”

I smiled in what I hoped was an enigmatic way. “Easy, I hacked the list.”

“But —”

“But what? It’s uncrackable? Nothing is if you try hard enough. Now get your arse in there before a security patrol notices.”

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